Stan Cornyn

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

With the purr of hot singles from the Everly Brothers warming up WBR’s echo-y offices “across the street” from the rest of Jack Warner’s picture company, the label’s head man, Jim Conkling kept at it. His job: turn this damn label into a profits-maker. Or else.

Conkling and his VP of Sales, Hal Cook, flew in to Chicago, to minimize the overhead costs of one of WBR’s few remaining distributorships. To get there, under the pressures from the studio watchdogs, required the two Records execs to take tourist class flights.

So James B. Conkling – once head of Capitol Records, once head of Columbia Records, once retired – flew tourist into O’Hare. Jim had also had a phone call from Chicago’ Dan Sorkin, a disc jockey of note on WCFL. He wanted to make an intro to Conkling after he arrived. “Sure thing.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

1960

Studio and Label Owner Jack Warner was about to shut down his two-year-old record label – its costs had kept growing, its sales had not – when he got a call from label head Jim Conkling. Just off a call from Nashville, Conkling had a deal that’d been offered. Jim told Jack, “This deal,” Jim told Jack, “could change everything.”

He'd been offered The Everly Brothers, who’d had a solid string of hits on Nashville’s Cadence label, but now yearned for Hollywood. “With us,” Conkling said, and went into the deal’s offer: For openers, the total guarantee was a million dollars, but...only at a hundred thousand a year for ten years.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

1959

Even with Tab and Kookie’s sales, the non-TV-from-Warner stream of albums had sold few. Jack Warner clearly saw that “his” new label was deep in the hole, deeper than his original criterion allowed (“the cost of one movie”). Warner’s co-leaders within the studio, notably the feisty-tough Benny Kalmenson (pictures distribution) and Herman Starr (music publishing), had growled at the new label’s costs, lack of revenues, and utter hopelessness.

Warner heard. After 365 days in the market, Billboard ran a special chart: “How many of a label’s releases do stores actually stock?” Biggies like Columbia and Capitol (both of which Conkling had earlier managed) got “90 percent.” Teenie labels like MGM and Dot got “30 percent.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

1959

The full soundtrack album for “77 Sunset Strip” became WBR’s first LP best-seller, the label’s only album to chart in all of 1959. It made it up to #3 on the charts.

However, listeners to this LP heard no TV stars. Those series’ stars were present only on the album’s cover. The audio inside: big band swing put together under Warren Barker’s studio orchestra, arrangements by Don Ralke (especially the title song/single) with songs like Caper at the Coffee House, Sunset Strip Cha Cha, and The Stu Bailey Blues.

Most attractive was the single that made this album so hot-hot-hot: a 45 called, simply, “77 Sunset Strip.”

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

Warner Bros. TV Stars Try to Sing. Some Can, Some Can’t.

1959

With Tab Hunter leading the way for Year One, Warner Bros. Records turned, in part, to offer music from its long list of “Picture Company Stars.” Under contract, these showed up when “asked to” by the studio. Example: Joining Troy Donahue for a pineapple shot was under-contracted Connie Stevens.

Actress Connie Stevens was the most musical of all these acting youths. She sang her light yet earthy way through three albums for Warner Bros. Records (it was unusual for her colleagues to survive even one first album chance). Her three started with “Conchetta” (her birth name).

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

If You Act for Jack, Then You Sing for Jack

Owning a major, movie/TV-making studio in Burbank (just up and over the hill from that “Hollywood” sign), brother Jack Warner had studio actors under contract. Dozens of them. Contracts that, in effect, said “Jack’s the Boss here. He’s your Boss.”

Warner and his contracts controlled Warner stars’ careers, on TV, in movies, and (starting in 1958) making records. With newborn Warner Records scrounging for Vitaphonic hits, using the picture company’s stars-under-contract to make hit records, that made sense to Warner. He made that clear to WBR’s head, Jim Conkling. Very.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

Opening the Label

Jack Warner Decides
He Needs a Record Label.

1958

Jack Warner ran his movie studio. By the 1950s, the term “Brothers” now hardly mattered; other than Jack, the other three Warner men lingered in New York, doing investing stuff mostly. Burbank, Jack owned it. There, he had a final vote on anything.

He liked making money that way.

To his credit, Jack Warner had added sound to movies early on (“The Jazz Singer” in 1927 was one). He’d also become a leader in making cartoons, with Bugs Bunny and pals. He’d gotten early into producing hot TV series. Set up a music publishing company (MPHC) for Warners. But in the late 1950s, he’d felt another of his discontents. But first …

Every Tuesday and Thursday, former Warner Bros. Records executive and industry insider Stan Cornyn ruminates on the past, present, and future of the music business.

1978 -- WBR Becomes HQ
For P-Funk and Soul
Starting Slow with Loma

The search for more sales remained intense at Warner Bros. Records in the early Sixties. Other labels had led the Billboard charts, with their English bands (where are our Beatles?), with their pop singles (should we make singles with those triplets?), with their R&B divisions (where is our Stax-type label?). Warner felt stuck with its oldie artists. Good oldies, but doing what they’d done for years.